FOOD NONSENSE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 275, 3 November 1933, Page 3

FOOD NONSENSE

AGED SPECIALIST'S VIEWS, ATTACK ON FADDISTS. Sir James Crichtou Browne, the eminent mental specialist, now a nonagenarian, had some outspoken remarks to make about what he described as “food nonsense,” at a dinner given in London by the Institute of Certificated Grocers. For the last 18 years it had been his pleasant duty to submit the toast of the Institute ol Grocers, he said. Ho referred with regret to the abolition of the Empire Marketing Board. “About food the most arrant and fantastic nonsense is talked and written,” said Sir James. “Every kind of food is alternately lauded as life-sav-ing and denounced as a poison. The faddists and the cranks are never at rest. Proteins and fats and carbohydrates are in turn condemned until one feels that there is nothing left on which to subsist but the mineral constituents. Even they will not do. tor I am frequently told that salt is the sole cause of cancer. Quite recently we have been told that sugar is the cause of colds in the head. If that be so 1 will stick to sugar and will let colds in the head do their worst.”

Speaking particularly of grocers, he continued:—“Your shops are piled ly with a multiplicity oi food products from all quarters of the globe, of the greatest nutritional value, that have not been derived by test tubes and experimental research, but by personal instinct.

“The greatest food discovery of the last century has been that ol vitamins; yet it is well to bear in mind that mankind has been, unknowingly, partaking ol the necessary vitamins lor tens of thousands of years. “Wo won the Battle of Waterloo and fought through tho Great War before vitamins were identified. The man with a good appetite, a clean palate, and commonsen.se, may go on confidently consuming tho varied foods to which he has been accustomed without risk.” After the dinner, which was of eight coures, Sir James Crichton Browne, in an interview, said: “1 always eat what 1 like and when 1 like, and I always advise my patients to eat what they fancy, but not to eat to excess. All through niy lite 1 have eaten what 1 fancied, and I feel as well now at 93 as 1 did when 1 was a young man.”